What are Zooplankton

The name plankton is derived from the Greek word planktos meaning to wander,
and refers to the weak swimming movements of organisms in this category.
Plankton can be subdivided into animals, or zooplankton, and plants, or
phytoplankton.

There are advantages in being small in

aquatic environments: in the first place
the base of the food chain, i.e. the
phytoplankton, consist of microscopic
plants from 1/1000 of a mm to 2 mm in
size. These cannot be efficiently
harvested by large animals.
Secondly, the phytoplankton occur
abundantly in the upper 200 metres of
the water column where there is
adequate light for photosynthesis;
being small helps planktonic animals to
maintain buoyancy and keeps them
close to their food source.
Thirdly, being small reduces the
number of predators that are able to
feed on them.
Fourthly, small size means that
generation time is short and this means
that these animals can rapidly colonise
new habitats and exploit new food
sources.
Zooplankton can be further subdivided
into holoplankton, i.e. permanent
members of the plankton, and
meroplankton, i.e. temporary members
of this category.
Meroplankton consist of larval and
young stages of animals that will adopt
a different lifestyle once they mature.
For example bottom-living animals such
as crabs and lobsters enter the
plankton as larvae for the purpose of
dispersion. Also many fish are
planktonic in the early stages of their
development.
It is not entirely true that zooplankton
are at the mercy of ocean currents.
Many organisms in this category
undergo vertical migrations over the
course of every 24 hour period (diel
vertical migration). The most common
pattern is to migrate deeper in the
water column during daytime and
ascend towards the surface at night.

The most likely explanation for this

behaviour is to escape predators that
are feeding in the upper, lighted layers
during daytime and to exploit the food
sources which are most abundant near
the surface when it is too dark for
successful capture by visual predators.
However, vertical migration may also
remove organisms from faster moving
currents near the surface into deeper
slower currents that may even be
travelling in the reverse direction.
Thus some degree of control over
distribution is possible by varying the
time spent at different depths.
Herbivorous zooplanktonic organisms
are faced not only with large vertebrate
predators such as fish, but also with
invertebrate carnivores not much
bigger than themselves.
As well as being small and migrating
vertically, they have adopted a range
of other protective strategies, e.g.
being transparent and aggregating into
schools or swarms.
Some jellyfish, although still regarded
as planktonic, can be very large i.e.
more than a metre across the bell.
However, they are very well defended
with thousands of tiny stinging cells
distributed mostly on tentacles.